Bubble Tea and Beanie Baby Knockoffs
by ilarual
Summary: Alternately titled: "Natsu Should Really Stop Taking Advice From Sting." Natsu is struggling to make his new job work, but a little help from a stranger might just turn his day around... NaLi mall AU.


**A/N-** This fic was written for the NaLi fandom Halloween Exchange on tumblr, and is a secret santa-style gift for lucyheartfiliavevo. She requested the prompt "bubble tea," so naturally I started with a barista/coffee shop AU that somehow also morphed into a mall AU, a community college AU, and a welding AU (seriously?) without my consent. But I'm really enjoying the universe, despite what a Frankenstein's Monster of an AU it actually is, so I might write some more for it. There will for sure be a sequel/second chapter to this fic, because this is really just the "meet cute" beginning, and naturally I can't just leave it there. We'll see about expanding the universe any further than that, I've got a lot of projects on my plate as it is.

But anyway, enough of my babbling! Happy Halloween, Emmy, I hope you enjoy this little ditty I've written up for you.

* * *

Natsu had never had a job before.

He really didn't need much in the way of stuff. No car to maintain, he didn't have any expensive hobbies. His foster dad gave him an allowance, always made sure he had the few things he _did_ need, and kept him well-fed, which was all that really mattered. He was a simple guy with simple needs, so wasting his summers as a fry cook or a cashier to get spending money seemed pointless. He skated through high school by bumming rides if he had to go further than he could walk and conning his friends into paying for his part of the pizza order if he didn't have any of his allowance left.

It worked out really well as far as he was concerned, and when he graduated he enrolled in the welding program at the local trade school. With his education being paid for by Igneel, and staying in the same town with the same friends he'd had all his life, there was really no reason to change a system that had worked so far.

That was, until a slight mishap that occurred during a block party towards the end of the summer following his first year in the program. There might or might not have been inappropriate tampering with a flashback arrestor on his part, and the end result was that his neighbor's garage was now a pile of ash.

Thankfully, Gildarts had a good sense of humor about the whole thing, and he liked Natsu, so he wasn't pressing charges. That was good because if it had gotten back to the school he probably would've been kicked out of the program... but he _had_ asked Natsu to pay the cost of rebuilding the garage, and Igneel was refusing to help. He'd been talking about "high time he learned some responsibility" or something.

He'd had to to start filling out job applications if he wanted to be able to pay Gildarts back. And it turned out that to have reached the age of nineteen with no employment history did not make him an attractive applicant to most potential employers in the slightest. He'd been turned down by two local fast food joints, an auto mechanic, a bait shop, and a big box store. An insurance agent looking for a new secretary had actually laughed in his face! But at last, during the first week of August, he'd finally gotten a call back after an interview. Natsu Dragneel had finally landed his first job…

...selling Puffy Pets at a kiosk in the mall.

 _Great_.

* * *

So far, the job was not going well at all.

He'd been given a rainbow tie-dye polo shirt and strict instructions not to wear it more than three shifts in a row without washing it. It was so neon it hurt his feelings, and it was branded with the Puffy Pets™ logo on the pocket. He'd also been told to wear khakis, but he didn't actually own any that weren't covered in paint and/or burn marks, so he was making do with black jeans, which his boss had rolled his eyes at but allowed.

Questionable fashion requirements aside, though, the disaster was definitely more related to the work itself. Natsu was being paid three dollars below minimum wage, with the idea being that he would make the rest up in commissions from the kiosk sales.

The problem with that was that… well… Natsu was starting to think he wasn't a very good salesman.

"When I handed my check over to Gildarts, he took one look at the amount and _laughed_ ," Natsu said miserably.

His woe was greeted, predictably, by raucous laughter, and he thought crossed Natsu's mind briefly that maybe he should get better friends.

The usual gang— that was to say, Sting, Rogue, Gray, and Gajeel (who always showed up despite never being invited)— were seated at their usual corner booth at Firehouse Pizza. Natsu was sandwiched between Sting and Rogue and thoroughly regretting his decision to come out with the guys after class. If he was going to be mocked, at least he could have picked up an extra shift at work and be getting paid for it.

"Seriously, guys, it's not funny!" he exclaimed. "I'm _never_ gonna be able to pay Gildarts back at this rate!"

"Shoulda thought've that before you started messing with volatile gases in his shed!" Gajeel pointed out, snickering into his soda.

"Shut it, asshole," Natsu said with a glower. "I was just trying to see if I could get the torch to change colors. I have a lot of natural curiosity, okay?"

"You gotta admit, a green torch would be pretty sick," Sting said. His eyes lit up with enthusiasm as he warmed to the idea. "Ooh, or _purple!_ "

"Yeah, exactly!" Natsu exclaimed. "I bet if you messed with the temperature or… like, remember in high school when we mixed stuff and it made different colored fire? Betcha you could do that with acetylene!"

Gajeel's expression told Natsu _exactly_ what he thought of his inspiration. "There are so many reasons that would never work," he said flatly.

"Yeah, seriously," Gray agreed. "You're gonna end up winning the Darwin Award at this rate, Pyro."

"The what?"

Gray rolled his eyes. "Never mind."

"What Mr. Fancy Science College over here is tryin' to say," Gajeel said, jerking his thumb in Gray's direction, "is that one of these days you're gonna blow your ass up."

" _Am not_ ," Natsu protested. "I've learned my lesson, okay? No more messing with equipment unsupervised!"

"Aw, look at him," Sting cooed. "Our little Natsu's finally growing up."

"I'm gonna punch you," Natsu grumbled. "And anyway, all of this is beside the point. What'm I supposed to do about paying Gildarts back?"

"Just suck it up and keep working at it?" Gajeel suggested, prompting both Rogue and Gray to nod in agreement.

Sting, however, shook his head. "Nah, don't listen to these bozos. Natsu, my guy, you're being paid on commission, right? So all you gotta do is sell more of those colorful, stuffed little bastards."

Natsu frowned. "But how? That's the problem, I tried talking to people the way my boss said, but everybody just says 'no thanks' and keeps walking."

Sting grinned and threw a brotherly arm around his shoulder. "What you need, my friend," he said sagely, "is a gimmick."

* * *

Juggling, it turned out, was not a great gimmick.

Natsu was pretty coordinated, but that was more in an athletic, track star, co-captain of the hockey team way, not a "keep four colorful balls in the air while also trying to make eye contact with strangers" way. Somehow it just didn't seem to be working out for him very well. He kept bumping into people, and the final straw came when he tripped over his own feet trying to catch the red ball after he threw it a little too high and crashed into the kiosk. He grabbed at the cart as he went down, but to no avail, and watched in horror as the whole thing listed to the side, teetered for a split second, and then came smashing down. Stuffed animals went everywhere, and the kiosk itself made a very ominous crunching noise as it came down. He rather suspected that something was broken.

"Why is everything going wrong lately?" he muttered under his breath.

Suddenly, a voice from behind him said, "Everyone has bad days, don't let it get you down."

Natsu whipped around, bracing himself back on his hands as he rolled off the wreckage of the kiosk, and found himself looking up at a girl. The first thing he noticed was her eyes, which were huge and so blue they almost hurt to look at. She was wearing a purple apron over her clothes, so he guessed she probably worked at one of the food places in the mall. She looked down at him with curious eyes.

"Are you okay?" she asked, offering him a hand. He took it, and she pulled him up with surprising strength considering her delicate build.

He nodded. "I've taken hits worse than that, I'm okay." He glanced over his shoulder and sighed. "Not sure about the kiosk, though."

She shook her head. "I wouldn't worry about it too much. The Puffy Pets stand has had kind of a long history of getting trashed."

"Huh?"

The girl giggled. "I've worked at the mall for a couple years now, and I'm starting to think this particular kiosk is cursed. It seems like no matter who's on duty, it always ends up knocked over or something. All the kiosks used to be on wheeled carts, but after this one escaped and ended up crashing into the Baby Gap, they changed them to stands like this instead."

Natsu scratched his head. "Huh. That's weird."

"Yeah. I wonder sometimes if Mr. Gaebolg put a curse on it after he sold it to the new owner," she mused, staring intently at the cart and apparently lost in thought.

"Wha—?"

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, seeming to come back to the present somewhat. "Here I am babbling away and there's work to do. Do you want help picking this all up? I have a few minutes before the start of my shift."

Natsu didn't take long to ponder her offer. This girl was pretty weird, but she was nice, and he really wasn't looking forward to picking this up by himself. "That'd be awesome!" he exclaimed.

And so they set about righting the kiosk and picking up and reordering the stacks of oversized stuffed animals. His new friend chattered lightly as they worked and he cheerfully joined in her small talk. It was nothing groundbreaking, just the casual back and forth between new acquaintances, talking about the weather (it was obnoxiously cool for August), school (she told him she was starting at community college in a few weeks, he talked about the welding program), and the pros and cons of working at the mall (convenient public transportation vs. annoying customers). But it was just… nice, and Natsu quickly discovered that what Igneel always said was true— many hands _did_ make light work, after all.

It took them all of ten minutes to put the kiosk to rights, though there wasn't much to be done about the long strip of laminate that had snapped off the stand when it fell over. Natsu picked the cracked bits of resin up off the floor, lower lip jutting out slightly as he studied them.

"I think this is gonna come out of my next paycheck," he said.

She winced in sympathy. "I know that feeling. At my job, if we mess up someone's drink order, the cost of the wasted ingredients comes out of our pay, too."

"So you're at Starbucks?" he ventured.

She shook her head. "Nah, nothing that corporate. I'm at the little bubble tea place down by all the hipster trash indie stores."

Natsu crossed his arms, pondering this. "What exactly is bubble tea, anyway?" he asked.

"Well, it's complicated, but basically it's a tea drink with milk and tapioca balls added to give it a different texture."

Natsu made a face. His experiences with tapioca in the past had not been pleasant. "That sounds weird." And unappetizing, but he was already fond of his new friend and he didn't want to offend her by calling the stuff she sold gross.

She nodded. "I thought so too when I first started working there, but it's actually grown on me. You should try it sometime."

"Uh… maybe," he said warily. He took food and drink very seriously, and he didn't want to make promises to try something that sounded nasty.

"Well, if you ever wanna give it a chance, just turn right at RadioShack, you can't miss us," she said.

Natsu nodded because he really didn't know what else to say, and an awkward silence descended. The girl, mercifully, broke the silence before it got too weird.

"Hey, so, I need to get to work pretty soon," she said, "but can I ask you something?"

"Uh, sure, I guess."

"Why were you juggling, anyway?" she asked. "That seems pretty random."

Natsu's shoulders slumped. "I suck at selling, apparently. One of my buddies suggested maybe I needed a gimmick to get customers' attention."

Her eyes widened, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to try to stifle her giggles. "I don't think juggling is the way to go," she said through her fingers.

"Figured that out, thanks," he said.

She shook her head. "Sorry. I didn't mean to laugh. It's just… a very original way to try to boost sales, I guess."

Natsu shook his head. "I'm never taking Sting's advice again."

"That might be for the best," she said, nodding seriously. "Would you like my two cents?"

He shrugged. "Can't be worse than telling me to juggle. Go for it."

"Speaking as someone who has mastered the art of upselling— if I do say so myself— the trick is to know your customer. In your case, that means picking the people you approach wisely."

"What do you mean?"

She tapped her finger against her lips, pondering, before she said, "Well, a middle aged guy probably isn't going to want to buy a Puffy Pet, right? I mean, maybe if you work the right angle once you get more used to this you'd be able to sell to more unlikely customers, but since you're still getting the hang of it… well, it might be a good idea to narrow your focus."

"I guess that makes sense," Natsu mused. "I don't think I'd be able to convince a guy like Gajeel to buy one of these."

 _Then again_ , he thought, eyeing the stack of black cats _, Gajeel occasionally had some very weird tastes._

"Exactly," she said. "For now you'll want to stick to obvious targets. Families with little kids, grandparents. Probably teenage girls, too."

Natsu considered her words, and looked at her carefully. "Hey… _you're_ a teenage girl," he said slowly. His eyes lit up as an idea struck him. "Do you wanna buy one?"

She smiled. "You know what? Why not. Payday was yesterday, I can afford it."

"Awesome! Which one would you like?" he asked. "Ooh, how about the dolphin? Wait, no, the parrot? Oh! I know! You should get the white cat, its eyes are the exact same shade of blue as yours!" He pulled one of the cats in question off the pile and presented it to her with an excited flourish.

She beamed. "That's sweet, I love her. How much does she cost?"

"Fourteen ninety-nine plus tax. I'll ring her up, hang on." As Natsu fiddled with the cash register, something very important occurred to him. "Hey," he said, looking up suddenly. "What's your name?"

"Lisanna," she said. "And you're Natsu."

His eyes widened. "Are you _psychic_ , too?"

She laughed. "No, dummy, you're wearing a nametag." She pointed at his chest.

Natsu looked down and remembered that he was, in fact, wearing a lanyard with a photo ID around his neck. He could feel his face heating up, and returned his attention to the finicky register to try and hide the worst of his blushing.

Lisanna handed over a few bills, he printed out a receipt, and offered her a bag for her new purchase, which she declined on account of not wanting to waste the plastic. And that, it seemed, was the end of that.

Natsu knew she had to go to work, she'd said her shift was starting soon, but he found himself extremely reluctant to see her go. She was the first person who'd actually been genuinely kind to him at the mall so far, and she was cute and smelled nice, too.

"Hey, Lisanna!" he called, before she could walk too far away.

She turned back to look at him questioningly.

"Thanks for everything!"

Her grin was wide and she waved enthusiastically for a few moments before calling back, "Stop by the bubble tea shop sometime, I promise I'll make you something you'll enjoy!"

Natsu paused for a second, considering that, and then with a mental shrug, waved back and yelled, "I'm holding you to that!"

And while his sales didn't improve a whole lot— _that_ day, at least— and his boss yelled at him for damaging the kiosk, by the end of the day, Natsu thought that it had actually been an extremely successful day at work.

Maybe he was finally getting the hang of this employment thing, after all.


End file.
